Spanish to English Other Education / Pedagogy University course terminology

I'm dithering... My text is a survey, to be sent to university teachers involved in teaching on Communications courses. The questions revolve around what the degree course is actually called, and its syllabus.

There are frequent references to "materia", which I immediately translated as "paper" (as in exam paper, exam subject, course, course subject), since this is the term used where I did my degree (Cambridge, UK). However, last minute doubts now assail me, and I wanted to ask if this is the term most commonly used in British universities (not US/Australia etc).

As a translator from Spanish, I suppose I tend to avoid using the term "course" because of the confusions which so often arise - maybe I'm overcompensating, but I don't want "course subject" to get confused with a "course" which could be four years long...

Here are a few examples of context:

"Señale la denominación de la *materia* que su Universidad ha elegido para esta docencia" (pls note that in the very next question, the term materia is replaced by asignatura, indicating that whoever wrote the questionnaire probably deems them interchangeable)

"Número de docentes asignados a la *materia*"

"Ubicación de la *Materia*, según ciclos universitarios" (this one is particular fun, as you can imagine!)

"Competencias perseguidas en la *Materia*"

Your comments will be very gratefully received, but please remember that I only want to consider terminology used in British universities in this case.